Empowering universities for Indonesia’s future
Call to Innovation
- Indonesia’s higher education transformation requires collective leadership.
- Elevate HE engages universities, government agencies, industry actors, and international partners to join this national transformation movement.
- Strengthening universities means investing together and sharing with many.
Indonesia’s ambition to realize Golden Indonesia 2045 depends fundamentally on the transformation of its higher education system. With more than 4,600 universities and polytechnics, Indonesia has scale. It now must accelerate quality, relevance, innovation, and global competitiveness.
Elevate HE is a structured, multi-year initiative designed to strengthen Indonesian universities as engines of sustainable economic development. It builds institutional leadership capacity, modernizes curricula, integrates digital and AI capabilities, strengthens research and innovation ecosystems, and enhances graduate employability.
Elevate HE engages a large international network of leading international institutions and specialists, and with partner universities and polytechnics across Indonesia. Core team from: Australia National University (ANU), KTH Sweden, MIT, Tsinghua University, Singapore Polytechnic, Politeknik Politeknik Gajah Tunggal, United in Diversity Foundation (UID), Indonesia-Australia Business Council, Politeknik Gajah Tunggal, EUNOIA EDUHUB, and more…
DOWNLOAD: Advanced Leadership Program
ENGAGE: HE ELEVATE
Objectives and Imperatives
Elevate HE is a national transformation network strengthening university leadership, curriculum relevance, global engagement and institutional performance.
Powered by the spirit of gotong royong, Elevate HE works to:
- Build institutional leadership
- Transform teaching and curriculum
- Strengthen research outcomes
- Improve graduate employability
- Integrate AI, and
- Incorporate sustainability principles.
Acting now is imperative to ensure that Indonesia’s universities develop in contextually relevant, distinguished and productive ways:
- Indonesia’s young, growing population is one of the nation’s greatest assets, and higher education is the key to unlocking its full potential.
- Universities are uniquely positioned to become engines of regional economic growth, driving innovation and prosperity across the archipelago.
- Demand for skilled, future-ready graduates is surging, across technology, industry, healthcare, and the creative economy.
- International partnerships give Indonesian universities access to world-class expertise, methodologies, and networks at a fraction of traditional costs.
Program Focus Areas
| Focus | Details |
| University Leadership & Governance | Strong university leadership is the foundation of any transformation. This focus area trains rectors, deans, department heads, and emerging leaders to govern complex institutions, lead strategic change, manage multi-disciplinary portfolios, and build high-performing academic teams. Special emphasis is placed on new and incoming rectors. |
| Modern Curriculum & Graduate Readiness | Universities need to keep pace with the rapidly changing demands of the economy and society. This focus area introduces the internationally proven CDIO framework (Conceive–Design–Implement– Operate), used in over 200 universities globally, to help faculty redesign programs that produce graduates with the skills employers actually need: critical thinking, collaboration, digital fluency, and innovation. |
| AI & Digital Transformation | Universities that do not embrace digital transformation and AI risk becoming irrelevant. This focus area equips universities to integrate AI tools into teaching, research, and administration, creating smarter campuses, more engaging learning environments, and more efficient institutions. |
| Research, Innovation & Industry Links | Indonesia’s universities need to significantly increase their research output and translate that research into innovation and economic value. This focus area strengthens research capacity, diversifies funding sources, and builds systematic connections between universities, industry, and government, creating pathways from academic discovery to real-world impact. |
| Academic Quality, Rankings & Accreditation | Accreditation and global rankings are increasingly important for attracting students, faculty, and funding. This focus area builds the institutional knowledge, data systems, and quality assurance processes needed to demonstrate excellence, both nationally and internationally. |
| Sustainability & Net Zero Campuses | The next generation of graduates must be equipped to address climate change and build a sustainable future. This focus area helps universities embed sustainability into everything they do — from campus operations to curricula — aligning with international SDGs standards and positioning Indonesian universities as global leaders in sustainable development. |
Distinguishing University Leadership
Government policy is for Indonesia to become an advanced economy with a secure middle-class population by 2045. The Golden Indonesia 2045 Vision will require a large contribution from higher education. In fact, the realization of the Golden Indonesia 2045 vision will be challenging without complementary improvements in higher education which also address local problems.
The program mission and values embrace:
- The Knowledge Exchange model
- The Integrated Research, Education and Innovation based institution
- Indonesia’s Tri Hita Karana philosophy
- The United National Sustainable Development Goals
- The internationally recognized CDIO Framework
- A structured train-the-trainer institutional transformation approach
- A collaborative ethos: ‘Invest together, share with many’, and
- Building Indonesia as a stable regional base for Southeast Asia expansion.
HE Elevate incorporates and builds on the Indonesian Higher Education Transformation Program, the Transforming Universities into Engines for Sustainable Economic Development, and the Strengthening Higher Education in Indonesia Leadership Development Program.
Background Rationales
Indonesia’s higher education system is at a critical juncture. Despite its scale and growing national ambition, the sector continues to face structural challenges, including uneven academic quality and accreditation performance, limited research output and global publications, and curricula that are often misaligned with industry and societal needs. Digital transformation remains inconsistent across institutions, while leadership and governance capacity constraints hinder effective institutional reform. In addition, regional disparities continue to affect equitable access to quality education and student outcomes across the archipelago.
Yet within these challenges lies a significant opportunity. Indonesian universities have the potential to become powerful drivers of innovation ecosystems, anchoring regional economic development and strengthening collaboration between academia, industry, and government. By modernizing curricula, strengthening research and innovation capacity, and building capable leadership teams, universities can position themselves as producers of globally competitive graduates—equipped not only with technical competence, but also with the adaptability, creativity, and ethical grounding required for the future economy.
HE Elevate will support the transformation of the Indonesian universities to increase their attractiveness, quality and competitiveness. The long-term objectives of the program are to increase the impact of universities as engines for national development by:
- Increasing the knowledge exchange within the Higher Education system and the society at large
- Building skilled leaders of transformation by structured professional education
- Introducing and implementing the international CDIO pedagogical methodology framework with initial focus on engineering, science and innovation education programs
- Focusing subsequent efforts on research with a consideration of use and catalyzing innovations
- Demonstrating increasing quality, sustainability and international recognition of the Indonesian Higher Education system, and
- Supporting the academic mission of the adaptable university.
In coming years HE Elevate will:
- Engage university partners
- Support key stakeholders in industry, government, and philanthropy
- Strengthen accreditation outcomes and global rankings
- Transform academic programs
- Train faculty and leaders
- Improve graduation and employability rates, increase research output and catalysing innovations, and
- Institutionalize knowledge exchange nationally and internationally between academia, industry, and government.
Training university executives undergirds sound future leadership of higher education. As well, the higher education sector contributes directly and in multiplicative ways to broader economies through service exports, by supporting research and collaboration, and by stimulating broader engagement.
As Indonesian universities further position as engines for growth it becomes ever more important to ensure leaders are capable and ready to handle the challenges and seize the opportunities which lie ahead. To excel, university leaders must understand contemporary global and operating contexts, the cultivation of research and talent excellence, and productive strategies for ensuring academic quality.
Team-based training is needed to yield substantial sustainable transformation. Short-cycle individual training can drive short-term individual change but often does little for institutions, the sector or countries. Ideally, a handful of current and emerging leaders are engaged from each university or polytechnic.
Team participants include university leadership, Deans, Department Heads, faculty of all ranks, program Directors/Coordinators, and executive administrators. Special value derives from executives who are commencing their leadership journey, fostering academic and social exchanges for decades. Training university executives at the outset of their leadership journey makes a formative contribution to their current role and institution, helping them become more effective professionals. In the near and long term, it enhances graduates’ work and outcomes, in turn shaping their colleagues and communities.
Collaboration is the best way to realise rapid, effective and productive gains in leadership capability and university growth. Partnering university teams will realise swift capability uplift with modest investment of time and resources. HE Elevate graduates will:
- Understand global university contexts and how next-generation leadership can drive university transformation
- Build tactics for leading faculty and institutions to ensure education quality
- Forge know-how and strategies relating to research performance and excellence initiatives
- Co-design a suite of transformative executive development workshops over the next year, and
- Expand the national and international network of peers and scholars, encourage collaboration and sharing.
DOWNLOAD: Advanced Leadership Program
ENGAGE: HE ELEVATE
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